Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

Cornel West And Tavis Smiley Have Never Supported President Obama!

As Dr. Cornel West continues his crusade to undermine our President, I keep hearing how he was once a supporter of President Obama. If he did claim to be a supporter, it was just that — a claim.

I decided to go back in time with the help of Google and find out if he ever REALLY supported Barack Obama and exactly when it was that Dr. West and his sidekick, Tavis Smiley, began their assault on our first black president.

I typed into the search bar the words “Cornel West Supports Obama” and then proceeded to weed through hundreds of hits about Cornel’s criticism of President Obama, page after page after page of links to stories about “black mascots” and “oligarchs and plutocrats” and “fear of free black men”. There were articles by conservatives and liberals, all using Cornel West to justify their own hatred and dislike for our President.

I looked at hundreds of results from my Google search and that one transcript was about the extent of the “support” I found for President Obama. I challenge any defenders of West to provide more, besides people saying he supported the president.

In my attempt to find Cornel’s support of candidate Obama, I did come across what to me is the beginning of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley’s descent into pettiness and self defeatism.

As Obama’s campaign got started, black media juggernaut Tavis Smiley exemplified the black community’s lukewarm response, declaring, “There is not a black groundswell … saying ‘Run, Obama, Run.'” He pinpointed Obama’s lack of common history with other black Americans as part of what made people of color skeptical about him, because he did not have a “long-standing relationship with the black community.” Around the same time, prominent black intellectual Cornel West criticized Obama for beginning his campaign in Springfield, Ill. (which he implied is a predominantly white community), instead of at Smiley’s State of Black America conference. Like Smiley, Debra J. Dickerson, writing in Salon, described Obama as “not black” in part because his biography does not include the legacy of slavery.

Princeton professor Cornel West was also concerned by Obama’s absence. “I want to say that I’m deeply disappointed that my dear brother Barack Obama decided not to go pay tribute and lay his wreath for the great Martin Luther King, Jr.,” West wrote.

Although West is an Obama supporter and understands the politics behind the candidate’s decision, he still disagreed with the decision. Dr. King’s message, he said, is not “reducible to political calculations, even for the campaign for presidency” and “can in no way be subject to strategies for access to political power.”

But for every criticism of Obama by a prominent black public figure, there seems to be some sort of backlash. The reaction to Cornel West was no exception to the rule.

“My prayer for you Dr. West is that you humble yourself and come down off your judgmental high horse and walk with us common folk who are experiencing a transforming moment in the history of America,” wrote one critic, identified online as Rev. Holmes. “Stop your ego (edging out God) from getting in the way and you will see the bigger picture,” said the writer.

“Dr. West, I have long admired the brilliant creativity of your thinking for many years, but in my humble opinion you are WAY, WAY, WAY off the mark with this one,” wrote another commenter.

“So, Dr. West, let me get this straight,” wrote a third critic. “[Y]ou are concerned that a black man who is the Democratic front-runner for the highest office in our country and is promoting change didn’t go back to the site where another high black figure who also promoted change was assassinated?”

A fourth critic chimed in, “I’d like to share my ‘deep disappointment’ in my ‘dear brother’ Cornel West. It seems that Barack Obama’s successful White House run is making many so-called black leaders and intellectuals go a little insane. This article was completely unnecessary, and woefully short-sighted. not to mention petty as all get-out!”

The brief two-paragraph post by Cornel West elicited more than 1200 comments on the Huffington Post web site, many of them defending Obama and criticizing West.

Something similar happened to Tavis Smiley when he challenged Sen. Barack Obama for not attending an annual “State of the Black Union” event he moderated in New Orleans two months ago. As a result of his criticism, the talk show host was chastened by African Americans who accused him of hurting Obama’s chances to win the presidency.

Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday, columnist Laura Washington accused Smiley of being out of touch after he made a recent comment criticizing Obama for failing to defend Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “This spokesman for black America is edging out onto a precarious limb,” she wrote. “His attacks on Obama are alienating his base. PBS and his multitude of corporate benefactors didn’t hire him to weave conspiracy theories and pick fights with natural allies.”

Tavis and his guests have every right to criticize Obama if they have substantive disagreements with his policy, his approach to politics or his viability as a general election candidate. They do not have a right to create a false, racial litmus test. All these black leaders who spent the year telling us that Obama is not old enough, not black enough and not angry enough to earn African American votes must have noticed that Obama can deliver the black vote to himself, by himself, with little help from these self-proclaimed racial power brokers.

I can’t quite figure out what motivates Tavis. At least I understand the old guard Civil Rights leaders. They are genuinely unwilling to cede power, believing that they have an authenticity claim based on their proximity to Martin Luther King, Jr. I also understand the frightened Democratic insiders who rely on the remnants of the Clinton machine for their bread and butter. But Tavis is not in either category. He is a part of a new generation of journalists who have carved out their own constituency. I am actually surprised to see Smiley join a pile-on led by his former boss Bob Johnson, who tried to silence him with such an ungracious termination a decade ago.

So as you can see, these two gentlemen have been undermining President Obama since before he was even elected. And then Cornel had the gall to complain about candidate Obama not returning his calls or making sure he had tickets to the inauguration. The “audacity” he showed by expecting tickets to the party after spending so much time attacking him personally is simply amazing.

It would be one thing if Dr. West was basing his criticism in reality and being honest with people, but as the rest of this post will show, the man will go to great lengths to distort, ignore, mischaracterize and outright lie about the accomplishments of our President. This paragraph from Dr. Cornel West’s article in the New York Times is worthy of analysis and debunking…

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

Is the “the age of Obama” over already? The entire premise of his screed seems to place the time frame for “fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy” as 2 years. Professor West’s indictment seems just a little premature.

If you break apart what he wrote in the paragraph above, you see that there is barely a shred of truth in it. Maybe Cornel just isn’t aware of what DID happen in the first two years plus of the President’s term. When your head is filled with jealousy, rage and pettiness, I imagine it would be hard for him to believe anything that might cause cognitive dissonance.

In the first sentence of that paragraph, West shamelessly invokes the legacy of Martin Luther King and assigns to President Obama the task of “fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy”. No pressure there, right? Especially in an environment where the forces of Fox News, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, TeaNN (CNN), the firebaggers (Firedoglake +), the Kossacks (DailyKos) , Salon (through Greenwald), Michael Moore, The Young Turks, Ed (Dems stay home) Schultz, Rachel (wrong on DADT) Maddow, Netroots (Dan Choi stunt) Nation….all alligned against the man for various reasons. But the “Superhero President” is supposed to overcome all of that and fulfill Dr. King’s legacy in two short years.

The second sentence begins with, “Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision…”, wo wo wo…hold up a second. What president in their right mind would start their presidency by articulating a “radical democratic vision”, even if you believed in one — which of course, candidate Obama wasn’t about at all. It blows me away how many of the supposed thinkers on the left obviously didn’t hear a word candidate Obama said during the election. I guess they were too busy trying to think up clever tropes to throw at his supporters like “dear leader” or “Obamabots” or “cult-like followers” or “style over substance” or any number of other demeaning and condescending terms to describe us pragmatic or realistic Democrats who supported Barack Obama.

They must not know how to use Google or Youtube where they could actually go back and check what candidate Obama said. Those of us who supported him were well aware of his positions and his desire to bring the two parties together. I didn’t agree with everything candidate Obama said, there has NEVER been a Democratic candidate that I agreed with 100% of the time, but I knew what I was voting for when I cast my ballot and wasn’t under any illusions. Anyone who is looking for that perfect candidate is doomed to a life of hating all politicians and sitting on the sidelines throwing grenades at both sides. It’s cool if you don’t want to participate and in many ways I envy people who don’t, but just admit it and don’t naively throw out the “both sides are the same” cop out as your cover. Are these people suffering from “Bush amnesia”…the condition where you FORGET WHAT IT WAS FUCKING LIKE WITH A REPUBLICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE!

Cornel West continues in his second sentence by accusing the President of not “fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief”, maybe Dr. West just doesn’t know that the president…

There are many more actions that were done to improve education, but let’s move on to the next falsehood in Cornel West’s list, “infrastructure and housing”. Here is some more reality on what ACTUALLY happened, that I’m sure Dr. King would have approved of…

But then Cornel West proceeds to blame things on the President which he had nothing or very little to do with. The one that seems to be the source of most of Cornel’s rage is the misnomer that President Obama bailed out the banks, he writes ” the administration gave us bailouts for banks”. Except that PRESIDENT OBAMA DID NOT SIGN THE BANK BAILOUT, PRESIDENT BUSH DID! Maybe Cornel West was just too busy attacking candidate Obama to know that the bank bailout was actually signed a month before Barack Obama was even elected president…..geez.

October 3, 2008

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — After two weeks of contentious and often emotional debate, the federal government’s far-reaching and historic plan to bail out the nation’s financial system was signed into law by President Bush on Friday afternoon.

“By coming together on this legislation, we have acted boldly to prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country,” Bush said less than an hour after the House voted 263 to 171 to pass the bill.

Cornel West and his buddy Tavis Smiley have to stop lying about that…just fucking stop it!

The final falsehood in just that one paragraph of Cornel’s incredible pile of lies was that somehow President Obama was responsible for “record profits for Wall Street”. Those profits had nothing to do with the policies and deregulation of Wall Street that began with Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2? It was all President Obama’s fault, right Cornel. That statement is beyond stupid and completely ignores reality. President Obama expended a lot of political capital, with few covering his back, to pass the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

I know it is a lot to ask, but I wish the media would be honest and admit that Cornel West and Tavis Smiley never REALLY supported President Obama. They have been a thorn in his side from the beginning and their current effort to hurt our Democratic president shows that they have no concern for real, working Americans. They are the real tools of the oligarchs and plutocrats and are apparently too stupid to realize it.

Thank you for this. I am saving it for future reference – it helps me with my talking points!
I appreciate the links to each accomplishment that this administration has achieved. They strengthen my information bank.

Oh yes, and about these: “the firebaggers (Firedoglake +), the Kossacks (DailyKos) , Salon (through Greenwald), Michael Moore, The Young Turks, Ed (Dems stay home) Schultz, Rachel (wrong on DADT) Maddow, Netroots (Dan Choi stunt) Nation….all alligned against the man for various reasons. But the “Superhero President” is supposed to overcome all of that and fulfill Dr. King’s legacy in two short years.”

Should we add Keith Olbermann, Cenk Uyger, and Al Gore? They sure are cozying up over at Current TV. Smells funny to me.

That list is just too damn long altogether. Most of it grew up during the Bush years, former Republicans who disliked Bush….now reverting back to their old ways. They were never liberal or left, they were just anti-Bush. The like to keep pretending they are left though, my goal is to expose them. :)

Even though they can talk LOUDLY, these PROFESSIONAL progressives are blind to the FACT that a majority of Democrats (60%) and even more Independents (77%) think of themselves as being CENTRIST moderates, and a sizable number even conservative.

And now Ralph “1.4% in 2008″ Nader and Cornel West are teaming up to search for a liberal Democrat to run against President Obama in Democratic Primaries. Can anyone off the top of their heads think of ANY Democrat other than Obama who has a chance of keeping the White House in 2012?

And Dylan Ratigan just shouted that “this president is working for the BAD GUYS!” Ratigan belongs on Faux News. Yesterday heard him and his favorite sidekick conservative Peter Morici make fun of Obama’s plans for jobs and economy, saying the only job Obama cares about is HIS job. But to be fair and balanced, Ratigan calls both the Democratic and Republican economic plans, “reckless, irresponsible and stupid.”

BTW, Ratigan started promoting his new book today that will be released in January. So we will hear about it daily from now on.

And today Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist in 2008 comes out slamming Obama’s “Class Warfare” in step with the talking point du jour ofBoehner and all of the Republicans. Of course Dick Cheney is supporting a Hillary Clinton run in 2012!

A Gallup poll. Really. They are one of the the most right leaning pollsters in the business.

Gallup has a poll that yearly shows Conservatives out number Liberals by 2-1.
Yet when you look at registration by party Dems always outnumber Republicans.

If that was really the case the Republicans have the worst voter drives and their get out the vote operation is terrible. It;s a poll used often by Republicans to show what you tried to prove. That most of America is Conservative leaning.

Yet when any poll that shows individual issues even Republicans favor liberal policies.

From DADT, raising taxes on the rich, not touching Medicare or SS.

As a follower of an Extreme Liberal site I’m pretty sure you know to take Gallup polls with a grain of salt. Well if your a worshiper of Obama who has never been seen as an extreme liberal why would you be on a site called extreme liberal. When Obama is a moderate. But I digress.

Far as your two polls. Over the last 10 years only one group has risen. That would be liberal. That would be the people who made small donations. Guess what. Most black people don’t see themselves as moderates.

So really. What the fuck are you talking about.

Far as the bad guys.

Wall Street. That’s what Dylan was talking about.

I guess they are the good guys in this world.

Man this is bizarro if I ever seen it.

On an extreme liberal site a guy makes a post about two extreme liberals. Because they call out how Obama has surrounded himself with no one that represents their EXTREME LIBERAL view.

Then one of his cheerleaders uses a right wing polling source and gets mad at a TV host for announcing Obama is working for WALL STREET.

Now I remind you. This is a site called EXTREME LIBERAL.

Yet no one can see that the real two EXTREME LIBERALS don’t have some valid points. You are so busy defending Obama against their personal beefs that you can’t see on policy they make sense.

This is not the Republicans calling him a socialist. This is two REAL EXTREME LIBERALS calling out Obama for not being an EXTREME LIBERAL. Oh the irony.

Shit is really fucked up when you can’t tell who the uncle Tom is in this argument.

I repeat. In this argument. The guy who has been fighting for consumer rights for decades with the man who has been fighting for economic equality for blacks for decades.

Or the guy playing golf with Boehner when he should have been beating the shit out of him with the golf club.

Do you think if Dr. West was ever president he would be playing golf with a Republican.

You know, whenever I get comments where the person is fixated on the moniker I chose for my blog, I know exactly what I’m dealing with. I’ll speak in short sentences for you.

If you have read my site before, you would know how I feel about polls and pollsters. I have some education in that area.

Because I support President Obama and I’m a liberal, your head explodes at that thought of it, right? I knew he wasn’t as liberal as me and more prone to compromise with Republicans than I would like, but I still supported him because unfortunately, for a Democrat to win office in the US, they have to appeal to moderates. That’s just reality. I prefer moderate liberalism to hard-core, right wing, tea party wingnuts. I continue to be socialist in my beliefs, but I don’t think having liberal beliefs should also make you self defeating, short sighted, uncaring to others, selfish and just plain fucking whiny.

Tavis (Walmart, Nationwide Insurance, Exxon) Smiley and Cornel (Princeton, bell hop got inaug tickets and I didn’t) West are not extreme liberals, you should probably do your homework before posing as a left winger with your concern trolling. Really! Tavis has been cozy-ing up to corporate America for years and Cornel has been practicing his pseudo-intellectualism for decades in his upscale lifestyle, hanging with entertainers. President Obama was a community organizer, have you seen either Tavis or Cornel getting out in the neighborhoods working with real poor people. They’ve been hosting lavish conferences, sponsored by that oh so liberal Walmart and a fucking Insurance company that I’m positive — works it’s ass off to keep insurance premiums low for working people….cough, spit, choke.

The whole golfing thing is just fucking stupid, any sort of response to it would just give it credence, grow the fuck up already.

But you should really get over the name of this blog, like I said, being liberal doesn’t mean being stupid. And helping Republicans get elected to send a message or some smoke signal to god-knows-who, is fucking stupid. It hurts real people and as an extreme liberal, I care about real people. And I live it every day of my life, I don’t have to prove it to anyone in the comments of a blog.

And “Brother” West got more face (‘MOUTH’) time on MSNBC today on Martin Bashir’s hour. Who needs Fox News blaring when I can walk in and out of my living room and hear many of the SAME Obama haters spewing REICH-wing talking points on MSNBC and CNN? They may try to be “fair and balanced” but these networks give HOURS every day over to these professional talking heads.

Seems that Cornel West began to slime Obama early on in the 2008 campaign.

When Obama accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, the celebrity scholar Cornel West groused that the first African-American standard-bearer for a major party had “run from history” by failing to mention explicitly the “black freedom movement.”

I like Gore and some occasional Obama critics although my respect usually goes down big time if the criticism towards Obama is unfair I get angry. West looks like a typical nut case and Nader is your typical nut bagger.

I think people are missing the point; Obama has a moderate level of political astuteness that makes him realize that Republicans are going to be against anything he suggest as a new policy initiative, including anything related to education. Conservatives are very adept at turning a phrase, so its a sure bet that any such any progressive legislative proposal would be instantly tarred and feathered as a continuation of his “socialist agenda.”

You have to wonder IF Ron Suskind has ulterior motives in his just published hit piece on President Obama. Martin Bashir did a good job of putting him on the spot tonight. (3:30 minutes into the tape below).

Suskind has been accused of misrepresenting interviews, butchering basic facts, cherry-picking quotes, and even cribbing information from Wikipedia.

The Grio review feels Suskind dwells too much on the negative and there are problems in every administration, nothing runs smoothly all of the time, especially when powerful people are brought in for their advice.

Meanwhile, no president has experienced such economic turmoil in his administration since Roosevelt. The presidency is no easy job, and Barack Obama has had more crises on his plate than any other leader in recent memory. Yet, the president has accomplishments came despite the death threats, lawmakers disrespecting him and labeling him a terrorist, and his foes vowing to wreck the economy in order to make Obama a one term president.

So with President Obama, let’s take the good with the bad. The challenges and shortcomings of this White House intermingle with the successes, and we can learn from each. History is still being written on this man, and in any case he has accomplished far more than a number of his predecessors. We can only hope that the president will stop taking bad advice from bad advisors and send them packing in a second term, if not sooner.

Wow, Extreme Liberal, this is masterful. I’m in awe. That kind of research is very tedious and time-consuming to do and I am grateful you were willing to do it. Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your premise is correct: Smiley and West never supported the President. Ever. This is the kind of push-back I really appreciate. I love that you didn’t attack them, just pointed out the facts.

ExtremeLiberal, thank you so much for doing this incredible research that exposed the Tavis/West obsession with criticizing President Obama. Both the PL and the MSM have been using Cornel West to hide their racist attacks on the President. By the way your masterful dissection of West’s untruthful op-ed in the NYT was really a thing of beauty. Really a great article that needs to be shared with as many people as possible.

Good piece in today’s NY Times about the rise and fall of the American Left over the past century. I bet our bad breath concern troll does little more to advance liberal causes than to sit behind a keyboard whining. The Republicans have learned how NOT to lose and enjoy winning whereas too many Democrats seem to be masochists, enjoy losing so they can feel the pain then complain. Even though the GOP may look like they are in disarray now, they will come together next autumn form a solid front and use everything at their disposal to convince Independents to come their way. I see our troll posts without links, and thinks the USA is liberal when IN REALITY (I can shout in all caps too) most voters (the ones who decide) are centrist to conservative.

Cornel West on Martin Bashir today (does he ever have time to teach?) says he made a MAJOR MISTAKE backing Barack Obama in 2008. West said that Obama was “Offensive, condescending, disrespectful” towards the black caucus this past weekend. Poor Cornel whined that he promoted 65 events for Obama in 2008 and got no respect in return. He thinks Brother Obama needs to “apologize” to black America for being tied to the oligarchy represented with the likes of Goldman Sachs.

Dylan Ratigan was just on Bashir’s show saying that Obama took most of his money from Wall Street in 2008 but “hid it in the many small donations the received”. Ratigan is on a new high horse promoting a petition along with partner Huffington Post to get signatures to get money out of politics (like McCain-Feingold was so effective!!!). Ratigan has it up on his blogsite along with promoting his book to be finished in January (like there is no money in politics?!).

that’s funny because I spent several hours trying to find just one article about him supporting President Obama, you would think I would find at least one besides the one I put in the post…which wasn’t really support. You could already read between the lines about him. I have a feeling the President is going to have to come out and smack Cornel down, which will be great to watch.

Tavis And Dr West are upset with Barack Obama because he will not deal with them. He totally ignore’s them.. Tavis has always wanted to be with the incrowd the rich and famous he is inferior to the likes of the Obama’s and he does not have the right degrees to be with the Elite.
No money not really just a journalist job and some slavery time books he tried to convince all Black folks should buy and consider them like the bible example ( The Covenant volume I and II. What a fraud!
Dr West is just a learned type of an individual and repeats big words that have no substance. The poor black community cannot even relate to him. He just a intellectectual who goes around telling every poor person how to think and what you can do to relieve your self of this disease of self hate. But deep down inside he’s live his life as a not attractive person and tries to hide behind that Harvard Education when deep inside he resent Barack Obama not only for his Astuteness on subject but he good looking and has a beautiful wife and children .
Believe me you may say this is foolishness but men do have there jealousy and limitation like everyone does even intellectual!

Who The Hell Am I!

I’m a liberal that is extreme in some ways and not in others. I support President Obama and make no apologies for it. I think he has done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider that he inherited a huge mess and has faced unprecedented opposition from a lazy & desperate Republican Party. I’m a film producer/director/editor, adjunct professor, technician, media critic and photographer when I’m not reading left wing blogs and typing on this one. – On Twitter @ExtremeLiberal or Email at liberalforreal (at) gmail.com

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